The effective disinfection of surfaces, particularly of contaminated instruments is an important requirement in the medical field, and medical instruments that are exposed to blood or other body fluids require disinfection between each use. The disinfection of delicate instruments such as flexible endoscopes, which are used in medical diagnosis and therapy and in surgical operations, still is performed to a significant extent manually using liquid disinfectants.
Numerous aqueous compositions containing a wide variety of disinfecting ingredients for the chemical disinfection of instruments are available. Preparations based on aldehydes have been widely used in practice, and also preparations based on peroxidic active ingredients, more particularly peracetic acid, are used for this application. Document US 2011/0217204 A1 describes a composition, comprising an anti-microbial agent comprising peracetic acid, and a reagent mixture comprising a buffer, an anticorrosive agent and a chelator, which can be ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid, hydroxyethylidenediphosphonic acid or sodium salts thereof.
However, particularly the shelf life of the use-solution of peroxidic systems still may be improved.
Therefore, the object underlying the present invention was to provide a disinfectant composition providing an improved shelf life.